Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

bhorowitz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 56 posts

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#11

Post by yaur »

argonaut wrote: post #4
yaur wrote: post #3

"you should get the issue onto the table by informing the employee that you have an important business relationship with his existing company and you will have to complete a reference check with the CEO prior to extending the offer" Is that even legal? IANAL but it seems highly unlikely that only hiring someone if they agree to a reference check with someone they didn't list as a reference is kosher in most states. T…

IANAL, but the correct question to ask (the opposite of your question), is: Is that illegal? And I'm pretty darn sure it is not illegal. Why would the even be illegal? You can reference check as much as you want. Be careful not to conflate social custom (it is customary that a company not reference check you with the company you work at) with law. EDIT (reply to below): which has nothing to do with law. Parent claime…

If you have a general policy where you have to talk to their direct manager or where you always have to talk to the CEO then you might be alright. But if you are making a special policy for employees of a certain company you should probably be talking to a lawyer first. This kind of stuff is almost all state law, so there isn't going to be a universal answer.

That aside, in the scenario "Fred" is good friends with one of your top engineers in the scenario presented. If you ask "Cathy" and she says yes everything is golden, if she says no and Fred gets canned or Cathy's company goes under one of your top employee's good friends is now unemployed because you put your personal relationships ahead of the buisness. This is not a good situation to be in.

Also from the article: "It is important to note that just about all of these kinds of policies violate the Right to Work laws in California"

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#12

Post by throwaway2048 »

mayop100 wrote: post #8

The similarities between this post and the actions that Google and Apple took and are now being investigated for are striking. At a small scale, it's just "good business" not to poach. At a large scale it's "evil" and illegal. Seems rather arbitrary to me.

Plenty of things that are inconsequential in the small scale are huge problems in the large scale.

I don't think anything is particularly arbitrary or contradictory about that idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy

Just because there is no sharp division between two states, doesn't mean they don't exist to begin with.

Quantity has a quality all its own

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#13

Post by ericd »

cheepin wrote: post #9

Why shouldn't companies retain employees by paying them what they are worth and giving them a good work environment rather than colluding to keep them from leaving?

It's not about colluding, it's just that the new CEO is bound to not hire you out of loyalty to his/her friend. Social laws and laws on the books don't always line up well.

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#14

Post by greggman »

mayop100 wrote: post #8

The similarities between this post and the actions that Google and Apple took and are now being investigated for are striking. At a small scale, it's just "good business" not to poach. At a large scale it's "evil" and illegal. Seems rather arbitrary to me.

Agreed

Your friend starts a company, you become friends with his employees. Eventually you start a company a really want to offer an amazing opportunity to one of your new friends but you don't because why?

Why are you denying someone the choice? It seems almost immoral that you wouldn't give her the choice and instead deny her the opportunity just because she happens to be employees by another friend

What if you had no faith that your friend's company would survive? Does that change your mind? What if you thought your friend's company would survive but never be more than limping along whereas you had faith that your company would become huge?

I ran a company,this issue came up when a friend asked if it was ok to poach from us. My first reaction was to think "no way" but my partners pointed out denying our employees opportunities was wrong. Fortunately none of them left.

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#15

Post by nraynaud »

mayop100 wrote: post #8

The similarities between this post and the actions that Google and Apple took and are now being investigated for are striking. At a small scale, it's just "good business" not to poach. At a large scale it's "evil" and illegal. Seems rather arbitrary to me.

I don't see why this blog post would give legal advice, it might well be plainly illegal, or half illegal. It's describing customs to newcomers, not law.

Remember, the law is often here to try to destroy "from now on" customs that are deemed toxic.

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#16

Post by hartator »

Such a terrible article.

Just ask your friend. In 99% of cases, it's okay to ask. I mean if the guy or the girl want to leave, your friend is gonna to tell everything you need to know, what matters. And maybe, you aren't gonna to hire him because he is actually terrible or maybe your friend will just say he is fantastic and give you a green light.

> It is important to note that just about all of these kinds of policies violate the Right to Work laws in California.

There is no right to work in California. [1] It's the actual opposite. Coming from a VC, that's shameful.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#17

Post by mcv »

What a bizarre kind of possessiveness. Companies don't own their employees. Slavery is supposed to have ended quite some time ago (yes, I know it still exists).

If you want to hire someone, hire them. If an employee leaves, let them leave. No hard feelings. If you really don't want them to leave, offer them more. Preferably do that before they think about leaving. This sort of unfair limitations on employee's employability is or should be illegal.

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#18

Post by mcv »

mayop100 wrote: post #8

The similarities between this post and the actions that Google and Apple took and are now being investigated for are striking. At a small scale, it's just "good business" not to poach. At a large scale it's "evil" and illegal. Seems rather arbitrary to me.

I don't think it's good business at all. It's stupid and evil. It's very small scale, so it doesn't have a lot of consequences outside the one employee that gets screwed, but scale is really the only difference here. And even one employee getting screwed unfairly is one too many.

Re: Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

#20

Post by Fuxy »

hartator wrote: post #16

Such a terrible article. Just ask your friend. In 99% of cases, it's okay to ask. I mean if the guy or the girl want to leave, your friend is gonna to tell everything you need to know, what matters. And maybe, you aren't gonna to hire him because he is actually terrible or maybe your friend will just say he is fantastic and give you a green light. > It is important to note that just about all of these kinds of polici…

Yep it should be quite easy to just ask your fiend about any potential employee applying to your company as long the employee is ok with that.

Being straight with the employee and your friend is the best policy.

You shouldn't mix business with friendship why would you care why the employee is leaving that's none of your business just give your friend a heads up so he can do something about it.

I'm sure he will appreciate it.

Post reply on HN